Monday, February 4, 2013

R.I.P Mayuri Sharma

"all life is no more than a match struck
in the dark and blown out again"

A match, whose flame lighted up my world and gave
me my name, was blown out today. And I can't help wishing it should have been
me instead. My ambitions are simple; I am not the love of anyone's life, and I
am not even a mother. You were needed more than me in this world. You were more
loved. Yet your light was snuffed out today, leaving me broken. Cancer won. Ironically, on World Cancer Day.

Ba, I had seen the fragility of life at close
range while working in the hospital. People die young, unexpected, and sometimes
just when their dreams get realized, and no matter how much they are loved. I
had known for long that the end was imminent, even though we never said it
aloud; I also know that this end has relieved your suffering, yet nothing could
prepare us for losing you.

Five years ago I was watching the movie Meet
Joe Black, the one where death personified and visited a man's home, and it
was few minutes to midnight when the phone rang and I was informed that my pehi had succumbed to a massive
myocardial infarct; I never watched that movie again, somehow I associated it
with the death. I don’t mourn about my aunt any more, but often remember that particular
phone call at work, in the shower, while stuck in the traffic, any time. Once I
was sitting at a Microbiology class, when I checked my phone at random and saw
a text from my father, "Mini
expired. Come home soon". She was a year older than me, and had stayed
with us for more than a decade, ever since my father found her on a bus,
running away from an abusive step-mother in some remote tea garden of Assam,
and with nowhere to go. She became a part of our family, and was undergoing
treatment at the hospital for a recently diagnosed brain tumour, dying a few
days before her scheduled surgery. The year before you were diagnosed with
cancer, you had called up to inform that your father was no more. Such news had
always been sudden jolts of shock in my life, never had I seen a dear one go
through a long period of suffering. Until you. You withered before our very
eyes.

Four years ago when my father was diagnosed with
sepsis and multi-organ dysfunction syndrome, and his survival depended on a
miracle, given his age and co-morbidities. He was admitted in the ICU and later
at the hospital ward for months. I had sat along with the attendants of other
ICU patients, and there was a boy of my age, whose mother was recovering from a
hemorrhagic stroke; he often talked to me of the signs of improvements his
mother was showing. On a regular sleepless, tired, anxious night of waiting,
the intercom buzzed announcing his mother's name and calling for her
attendants. He went into the ICU, thinking it was another call to buy more
medicines, but came back with the news that it was all over. And for the
remaining days till my father's recovery, my heart stopped every time they
announced his name in the ICU. Every day I see hopes cut short at the hospital,
it is an inevitable truth of life and I accept that. But, no matter how calm,
brave and resilient one is, and however prepared to receive bad news; it is
always difficult to let go of a loved one.

It is tragic, even comic, how I am always in a
rush, trying to beat time, putting off dreams till a convenient day, making
plans, messing up priorities, so much to do, so much not done, always chasing
the superfluous; much to the amusement of whoever is up there. What is the
point of it all? But then, life doesn't stop at the fear of its inevitable end.

I had insomnia since the past few days, worrying
about an exam result, which can be declared any day now. But these worries are laughable when it comes to the
larger perspective of life, when I think about what you had gone through, what
you must have felt at the unfair notice life gave you. No matter what happens
tomorrow I feel the need to be thankful for each moment of working, reading, writing,
spending time with my family, having a good home, of being alive. Not even a
single moment is worth wasting over what could have been or what will be, who
is in my life and who isn’t. Every moment should be savoured; love and laughter
should reverberate every day; one should ensure a life worth living; because
life gets snatched away from so many who deserved to have lived.

It has been just a few hours since you left us.
Yet this sudden brush with mortality creates in me an irrepressible desire to
feel alive; and that’s why I am writing now, writing for you. You found a love
so real, simple and true; a love that surpasses all others that I had ever
known. You brought into this world two lovely daughters, who make us proud
every single day, by just being who they are. You had been a wonderful sister,
daughter, wife, mother, daughter-in-law, friend; it is a blessing to have had
you in our lives. You make me want to believe in afterlife and I hope you are
in a happy place, wherever you are.

Ba, I won’t cry now, I am just relieved that your
suffering had ended. But someday, I would see your number among the phone
contacts, and knowing that your endearing voice would never answer at the other
end would widen the gaping hole of your absence. It will remain for the rest of my life. Some losses just hang awkward,
and permanent, amidst our thoughts; but then it is just the love we feel, isn’t it?